This is in reply to a query by Louis Janus, who asked for suggestions
for a client who wants to produce a map of the US, with individual
states enlarged or reduced to reflect population characteristics.

USA Today (and other Gannett publications) use Macintosh software to
produce their maps. They used to use MacDraw to produce PICT (a Mac
file format) maps (I've got a couple of old maps like this on file
somewhere); now I suspect that they use PostScript drawing programs
(Illustrator 88 or FreeHand), as these give finer results, and finer
control for image manipulation. I'm sure that there are a number of
PostScript art clip art packages that include the kind of US map with
states as individual elements that you need. If your colleague has
access to a program like Illustrator 88 (my favorite), she can easily
modify the elements in all kinds of ways--the sort of distortion you
described is pretty much a click or two to set up.

The place to look for PostScript clip art packages of this kind is in
one of the larger Mac publications--MacWorld, MacUser--or in one of the
quarterly summaries of Mac software--MacGuide (though I think that the
latter has gone to monthly).

I would bet that there are PostScript maps of the US lurking on the
major communications networks (CompuServe, GEnie)--in which case, she
could get the maps for the price of the downloads. (I'll check on this
the next time I log on to these networks--if you don't have access to
them, drop me a message; maybe I can get the files for you.)